Chapter 4

¹Jesus returned from the Jordan full of the holy Spirit, and he was led about in the desert ²for forty days by the Spirit, and was tempted by the devil. In all those days he ate nothing, and when they were over he was famished. ³And the devil said to him,

“If you are God’s son, tell this stone to turn into bread!”

⁴Jesus answered,

“The Scripture says, ‘Not on bread alone is man to live!’ ”

⁵And he took him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶And the devil said to him,

“I will give you all this power and their splendor, for it has been turned over to me, and I can give it to anyone I please. ⁷If you will do homage before me, it shall all be yours.”

⁸Jesus answered,

“The Scripture says, ‘You must do homage before the Lord your God, and worship him alone.’ ”

⁹And he took him to Jerusalem, and made him stand on the summit of the Temple, and said to him,

“If you are God’s son, throw yourself down from here, ¹⁰for the Scripture says, ‘He will give his angels orders about you, to protect you,’ ¹¹and, ‘They will lift you up with their hands, so that you may never strike your foot against a stone.’ ”

¹²Jesus answered,

“We have been told, ‘You shall not try the Lord your God.’ ”

¹³When the devil had tried every kind of temptation he left him till another time.

¹⁴Under the power of the Spirit Jesus returned to Galilee, and news of him went all over that region. ¹⁵And he taught in their synagogues, and was honored by them all.

¹⁶And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath he went to the synagogue, as he was accustomed to do, and stood up to read the Scriptures. ¹⁷And the roll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and he unrolled it and found the place where it says,

¹⁸“The spirit of the Lord is upon me,

For he has consecrated me to preach the good news to the poor,

He has sent me to announce to the prisoners their release and to the blind the recovery of their sight,

To set the down-trodden at liberty,

¹⁹To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor!”

²⁰And he rolled up the roll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed upon him. ²¹And he began by saying to them,

“This passage of Scripture has been fulfilled here in your hearing today!”

²²And they all spoke well of him and were astonished at the winning words that fell from his lips, and they said,

“Is he not Joseph’s son?”

²³He said to them,

“No doubt you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Doctor, cure yourself! Do the things here in your own country that we hear you did at Capernaum.’ ²⁴I tell you,” said he, “no prophet is welcome in his own country. ²⁵But, I tell you, there were plenty of widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was closed for three years and a half, and there was a great famine all over the land, ²⁶and Elijah was not sent to one of them, but to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. ²⁷And there were plenty of lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cured, but Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸And when the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all very angry, ²⁹and they got up and drove him out of the town and took him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, intending to throw him down from it. ³⁰But he made his way through the midst of them and went on.

³¹And he came down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee. And he taught them on the Sabbath, ³²and they were amazed at his teaching, for he spoke with authority. ³³There was a man in the synagogue who was possessed by the spirit of a foul demon and he cried out loudly,

³⁴“Ha! What do you want of us, Jesus, you Nazarene? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are! You are God’s Holy One!”

³⁵Jesus reproved him and said,

“Silence! Get out of him!”

And the demon threw the man down in the midst of them, and came out of him, without doing him any harm. ³⁶And they were all amazed and said to one another,

“What is the meaning of this teaching? For he gives orders authoritatively and effectually to the foul spirits, and they come out.” ³⁷And news of him spread to every place in that region.

³⁸When he got up and left the synagogue, he went to Simon’s house. And Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering with a severe attack of fever, and they asked him about her. ³⁹And he stood over her and reproved the fever and it left her, and she got up and waited on them.

⁴⁰As the sun went down all who had friends sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and cured them. ⁴¹And demons came out of many people, crying out,

“You are the Son of God!”

But he reproved them and forbade them to speak, because they knew he was the Christ.

⁴²When it was day, he left the house and made his way to a lonely spot, and crowds of people went in search of him, and overtook him and tried to keep him from leaving them. ⁴³But he said to them,

“I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other towns also, for that is what I was sent to do.”

⁴⁴So he went about Judea, preaching in the synagogues.